Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a remote support system having a remote support service, an image forming apparatus, an external terminal, a printer controller, methods of controlling these, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
As actions for troubleshooting a product become complex, customers frequently directly question a call-center of a maker to obtain an answer. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-208974 proposes a remote support service in accordance with audio or moving image communication and remote operation to readily perform troubleshooting between an image forming apparatus and a call-center. In the remote support service, at a time of an error occurrence in an image forming apparatus, resolution becomes possible by an operator of the call-center conveying an error solving approach to a user directly, without a worker for maintenance going to a site. With this, it becomes possible to shorten the time required to resolve the error.
In the remote support service, trouble-solving is performed while the operator and the user are both looking at a screen of the image forming apparatus, in accordance with a remote operation function. Here, a user may operate the screen in accordance with an instruction by the operator, and the operator may directly operate the screen in accordance with a remote operation. In solving trouble, a function operation in various screens or a setting change operation is performed.
However, there is a problem as is recited below in the foregoing conventional technique. During remote support service, there are many cases in which some kind of problem occurs in the image forming apparatus, such as an image defect for example. In addition, because an operator may operate a screen or a setting of the image forming apparatus by a remote operation, commonly it is desirable for them to concentrate on maintenance work. In other words, during remote support service, causing the image forming apparatus to operate after receiving a normal print job from an external unit is not desirable. However, during remote support service, a request to execute a test print with a purpose such as confirming print quality should be considered.
However, there are image forming systems in which a host computer and an image forming apparatus are connected via an image processing apparatus such as a DFE (Digital Front End). The image processing apparatus processes a print job received from the host computer and then transmits it to the image forming apparatus. Furthermore, print data stored on the image processing apparatus may be transmitted to the image forming apparatus as a print job, and setting information or the like of the image processing apparatus may be transmitted to the image forming apparatus as a print job. Even with such a system configuration, a request during remote support service as previously described should be considered.